Give the Gift of Career Success This Holiday Season

If you're looking for a meaningful and clutter-less gift this holiday season, consider giving that student, job hunter, career changer or entrepreneur on your list a gift that will get them on the road to life-long career success.

Beth Campbell Duke

PRLog - Dec. 3, 2010 - VANCOUVER ISLAND, British Columbia -- If you're looking for a meaningful and clutter-less gift this holiday season, consider giving that student, job hunter, career changer or entrepreneur on your list a gift that will get them on the road to life-long career success.

Personal branding is a lot more than creating a great online presence – it's the process that gets you to a great online presence that counts.

“The goal of the personal branding process is to empower people”, explains Beth Campbell Duke owner of CampbellDuke Personal Branding. “We spend a great deal of time at school studying for a career, and yet the reality for most of us is that there is still very little effort put in to helping students and adults pull together all of their personal strengths, skills and education into an effective personal marketing plan. It's even more important in the 21st century because of the increasing expectations for students and adult job hunters to have online marketing skills.”

“A resume is still a requirement, but it's no longer sufficient”, explains Campbell Duke.

At the foundation of developing an effective personal brand is an understanding of each person's unique combination of personality type, interests, skills and work values. “We're often overly narrow in our thinking about what kinds of work are available and just how many options for finding or creating fulfilling work exist” says Campbell Duke. “While post-secondary education is still very important for long-term career success, it's equally important to understand that you get a whole lot more from education than just job training for a specific job. Skills and knowledge are transferrable from one job to another. This is why we focus on each person's skills and experiences in the personal branding process.”

“Perhaps the biggest strength of the personal branding process is that it's very useful for people who haven't decided what they want to be when they grow up”, adds Campbell Duke. “Because we start with people's current education and experience, the personal branding process can actually help people decide on a direction.”

The end goal of the branding process is to provide people with the skills needed to create and maintain not just an online presence, but to develop personally. In learning how to select and use online personal marketing tools such as blogsites, Facebook, Linked In and Twitter, clients also hone their personal “soft-skills”. “There are 2 main aspects to developing your online presence: learning how to select and use the applications and sharpening your communication skills so your message is clear. Your website and social media profiles are there to help you promote yourself to potential employers or clients. The upside is that your online presence works for you 24/7.” But Campbell Duke also cautions, “Having either a negative online presence or no online presence is a very real downside. Potential employers and clients expect to be able to find positive and compelling information about you online, or you're at risk of being passed over in favour of another candidate.”

Beth Campbell Duke explains that there's a lot of satisfaction in putting together a personal brand, and that the process is a lot of fun. Online tools today are often free or low-cost and they're very user-friendly. And while she speaks about a personal branding “process”, Campbell Duke also explained that putting together an effective personal brand is a flexible process. “Some people like to work through the self-assessment component at the beginning and work on writing their biographies and website content before jumping in to the online tools. Other just want to fire up a website and play around with the online tools until they realize they need to have some content. Whichever process works for the client is the right one.”

The key is to get started on your personal brand, or to give someone on your list the gift of personal branding services. You'll be helping get them on the road to career success.

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Beth Campbell Duke offers personal branding services to job hunters, career changers and entrepreneurs from her home-base on Vancouver Island on Canada's west coast. You can access her services in person or by phone or Skype. Visit her website @ www.CampbellDuke.com to sign up for the monthly newsletter and to find links to CampbellDuke Personal Branding on Facebook and other social media sites.